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Shipping Woes Grow at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport

Cargo tonnage at Chicago’s O'Hare International Airport, the sixth-largest U.S. air cargo hub by traffic, rose 20% in the first half of the year. Here, FedEx jets at the company's facility at O'Hare last year.
Photo:
Scott Olson/Getty Images

Many companies opted to redirect shipments of goods such as consumer electronics and automotive to avoid delays at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and some of them have continued using air because of its convenience, industry officials say.

Cargo tonnage at O’Hare, the sixth-largest U.S. air cargo hub by traffic, rose 20% in the first half of the year, although growth has slowed of late, with volume up 7.1% in June from a year earlier, according to the Chicago Department of Aviation.

Chicago’s experience partly reflects a broader national increase in air shipments that has also been driven by improvements in the economy. Total U.S. air-cargo volume rose 5.6% in the first four months of this year, the most recent data available, with volume in the Pacific region jumping nearly 17%, according to the Transportation Department. Airports in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth have all seen significant cargo increases in 2015, with officials in Atlanta also expressing some concerns about logjams.

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In Chicago, the impact of higher volumes has been compounded by complications on the ground, including construction on roads leading to O’Hare, storage facilities that are proving too small, and long wait times in obtaining approval for new contracted employees to operate at the airport, industry officials say.

“It really hurts a lot of U.S. business,” said Jane Sorensen, president of the Chicago customs brokers and forwarders association. “It costs them more money, they suffer delays in getting the products to their customers, and it hurts the U.S. economy.”

Three sides of O’Hare have been constricted by construction, creating a bottleneck with hourslong delays for truck drivers, who are required by state law to drive for a limited number of hours.

Ground handlers, the individuals responsible for sorting and distributing cargo to trucks, are in short supply, slowing the pace of freight distribution. But the process of gaining security clearances for additional employees takes upward of six weeks, deterring many employees from sticking with the hiring process and hampering how quickly airlines and ground handlers can put staff on board during peak business periods.

“It takes six weeks from when you sit with someone to when they start training,” said Justin Lindsay, regional vice president of operations for
Forward Air Corp.
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“It takes minutes for them to get frustrated and walk out the door.”

In late May, representatives from Chicago’s communities of freight forwarders, ground handlers, trucking companies and airlines held a town hall-style meeting to discuss the issues. Since then, representatives from each group have convened a working group to address some of the underlying problems causing delays.

Among possible solutions floated are a push to persuade the city to speed up construction projects on existing roadways and build additional passages to the airport.

The parties are also trying to improve coordination, such as by having ground handlers begin communicating with truck drivers while they are still in line, for example. Companies can begin using localized social media to share wait times, delays and cargo availability.

Owen Kilmer, a spokesperson for the Chicago Department of Aviation, said O’Hare is taking steps to mitigate the traffic clogging its roadways and speed up cargo processing, including one project to build a new, 800,000 square-foot cargo processing facility on the airport’s northeast side.